


Our Hands Intertwined

by penoftruthiness



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-23 00:50:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4856912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penoftruthiness/pseuds/penoftruthiness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where your soulmate is written on your hand when you're born, both John and Sherlock are outliers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Hands Intertwined

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a long (long) time ago, but I just found it while I was clearing out my old computer. I don't think I ever posted it, so I hope you enjoy!

Sherlock’s born at home, as of course the Holmes family had opted to simply hire the best people to help instead of trusting the hospital to assign them by chance. Just as when Mycroft was born, every person present (after checking for the requisite signs of health: 10 fingers, 10 toes, does not resemble an alien in most ways) looks immediately at the back of his hand.

When Sherlock’s mother had found out she was pregnant, she had spent hours staring at the back of her hand, and then glancing at the man whose name was written there. His hand had her name printed in small yet neat letters. It looked like it had been typed on a keyboard. Both names were printed on the right hand. Everyone the Holmes’ had ever met also had names on their hands. Some people found the person, and some didn’t. It was all a matter of luck and chance, and who knows if the person whose name matched was the one it actually referred to? Whatever force had placed them there had conveniently forgotten surnames.

So, when thinking of what their baby would look like, what he would do, who he would be, they also imagined who he would be with. They’d settled on the name Sherlock after someone’s great-great uncle who had been knighted by some king or another hundreds of years ago. Mrs. Holmes later wondered if a more common name would have alleviated some of the teasing going on in the schoolyard, but Mycroft had by that point already been going for two years and had gained at least a healthy acquaintanceship with every other child in his year. Besides, Sherlock’s name had never been the focal point of the mockery.

After the newly-arrived baby had been cleaned off and calmed down, and the doctor deemed him stable enough to be held by his mother, she picked up his hand and turned it over. It was soft and smooth and everything a baby’s hand should be.

Only it wasn’t.

There was no indention or mark or letter there to indicate a future. The Holmes had considered the possibility of a boy’s name being there (after all, Mycroft’s said Greg, which Mycroft had deemed irrelevant and now covered up with gloves or strategically long coat sleeves), but they had never thought of no name appearing.

When she looked up with slight panic, the midwife shrugged. “I’ve heard of cases where it’s not there early on. I’ve got a friend who swore it only came in on a premature baby two months after birth. It’s not always exact.”

Only this friend was a friend of a friend of a friend who had been at a Christmas party and was trying vainly to win in some sort of medical-one-up argument with a colleague and later said that the hospital had been so concerned with keeping the baby alive that no one really looked closely at the baby’s hand until two days had passed, but the name was still there.

The midwife smiled and hoped, for the sake of this family, that it might eventually show up.

For good measure, the parents checked the left hand, and checked every morning and evening for the next two years, but the skin still remained soft and smooth like the day it was new.

 

John, however, was born at a hospital in the middle of a lot of hubbub and ended up being born on the same day as three other babies at the same place. His parents were overjoyed at the normalcy of his birth: he came three days before the due date, which had interrupted a very exciting football match at home, but was born at a very average weight and looked very healthy. The doctor checked the name on the hand and handed over baby John with a very large smile on his face: “The name’s Sarah.”

What a perfectly average, perfectly normal soul mate to have.

When they visited the baby afterwards, they took a quick peek at the others in the room.

“Wouldn’t it be poetic?” Said Mr. Watson, with a warm smile, “If his soulmate was born in the same hospital as him? Just hours apart?”

Mrs. Watson nodded in return, and started discretely checking the names on the other cribs. Two girls, Angela and Josephine, and a boy, Avery, were born on the same day as John. They looked at each other and shrugged.

“He’s got so many years to find her.” Mrs. Watson said.

 

Sherlock was two before he realized why everyone else would glance at their hand so often. He’d traced the lines on his parents’ hands many times, and was one of the four people on earth who had seen the name on Mycroft’s hand (the first two were his parents, and the fourth was a young boy he had been friends with as a child until he’d seen the name on Mycroft’s hand. That boy now stared at him from across the schoolyard, and did not quite ignore Mycroft, but did not acknowledge him either).

His hand was unimportant and boring, and the voice in his head which sounded derisive about _everything_ would sneer “normal” at it. But he finally decided to ask Mother.

“Why does everyone have names on their hand?” His voice was the blend of serious and childlike questioning that his family was quickly realizing was specific only to young Sherlock Holmes.

His mother sighed. She’d been waiting for this question, and actually expected it sooner considering how fast Sherlock had caught on to everything else in the world. “It’s…they’re names of people we were destined to be with forever. They’re soulmates, Sherlock.”

Sherlock pulled his face into something quite like a pout. “Why don’t I have one?”

The long pause must have alerted him that this was bad territory for his mother, so he nodded and left the room.

His mother was left wondering when she’d stopped asking herself that question.

 

John wanted to be a footballer since the moment he could walk. He’d seen the way his dad would yell and cheer at the television and the happiness on all his dad’s mates’ faces while watching a game. He’d sit in his dad’s lap and soak up the air of camaraderie and mutual support. He loved it.

When he was very small and not yet walking quite steadily, he would still toddle around for half an hour every day with the neighborhood kids while they all struggled to kick the ball around. His dad thought it was an absolute riot.

“Look at that kid! He’s going to be in a league someday, I’m telling ya! Look’t him go!”

And John would soak up the praise like a sponge and run with even more enthusiasm the next day, until his feet fell more firmly and he could kick the ball all the way across the field.

At school he was more or less the guy everyone liked. Or, more accurately, that no one disliked. He had friends he hung around with at lunchtime and he would kick around a ball with them sometimes. And sometimes he would notice some girls watching and he’d try to show off a bit and juggle the ball on his knee and preen when they’d applaud and whisper to each other.

He was maybe nine or ten when he and his friends finally understood why John might want to show off his skills and his friends convinced him to go talk to a girl who repeatedly showed up at lunchtime. However, he got out about two words before she told him:

“Look, your name’s not on my hand, okay? But no one has to know that. My name’s Sarah, and I think you should be my first boyfriend.”

She said it in a manner that firmly acknowledged that he would be far from her last boyfriend and only considered a stepping stone into a real relationship. Later he would realize that she was using him as training to impress a boy she’d really want (his name would be Hunter), but at the time she was cute and his football buddies were giving him thumbs up from a short distance away and he thought ‘Why not?’.

So he spent the next few weeks walking around the playground holding her hand and pretending to talk about dolls and ponies but really thinking about TV and comics and then a boy named Hunter showed up at their school and he found himself back to kicking a ball around while he watched Sarah hold hands with Hunter. It turned out that this Hunter was not her soul mate either, just more training.

“Don’t worry, mate! There’s no girl named Melissa within _hours_ of this place, but I haven’t given up hope!” His friend gave him a gap-toothed smile and John shrugged and decided that he wouldn’t really want Sarah as his soulmate anyway.

The next morning he woke up and Sarah’s name was gone, replaced with Jenny.

John rushed into his parents’ bedroom and woke up his dad.

“I don’t know, son, I’ve never heard of this happening before…I wish there was someone we could talk to in the area kiddo, but I just don’t think it’s possible.”

“What about in London?” And this was John, hoping against hope…

“I’m sorry, son. It’s just too far.” And his father’s face told John that yes, he really was sorry, but ‘too far’ meant ‘too much money’ and they’d just have to hope he was okay and not some sort of freak. “Now go back to bed, you’ve still got two hours ‘til school.”

John paused for two minutes on the other side of the door and could just make out his parents’ voices.

“I don’t know, I mean Harriet’s got _Clara_ and then John’s got a changing name…do you think it’s our fault that our kids are that way?”

“I hope they’ll both turn out okay.”

And ‘okay’ meant ‘normal’.

John went and slept in his sister’s room for the first time in five years and wondered how she’d felt about being called “dyke” before she was old enough to understand what romance was.

The last thing John thought before he went to sleep was “please let me be normal, _please_ ”.

 

Mycroft was fifteen when he walked in on his little brother trying to cut himself with a knife.

“For God’s sake, what do you think you’re doing?” He pulled the knife from Sherlock’s trembling hands and threw it across the room. Blood was dripping from what looked like the beginnings of a J.

“Mycroft, they’ve been asking to see my hand all day. Jim told the entire class that I’ve got nothing and now no one’s left me alone for hours…”

Mycroft thought he’d never hear that broken voice from his usually calm and stoic brother. He put a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder and tried to emulate a comforting pat.

“You can’t let them get to you like this Sherlock. If you can control them-”

“They can’t control you, yes, _I know_ , Mycroft. But a girl asked me if I was looking forward to being alone for the rest of my life and I didn’t know what to say, she’s already found her soul mate at the age of nine and what if I never find anyone?”

Mycroft weighed up all the answers floating around inside his brain, but eventually picked the one he’d been comforting himself with all these years after he’d knocked on Greg Lestrade’s door and Greg had called him a _faggot_ and slammed the door in his face even though someone had told him they were sure they’d seen something starting with an M and a Y on his hand. “You’ll be fine without them, Sherlock. Really, you will.”

And Sherlock took this to heart, wrapped the statement around and around the warm vital organ until no one in the world could tell it had actually functioned normally once. No one who saw Sherlock after that day ever would have guessed that he was once a little boy trying to cut up his hand because kids were mean.

Mycroft lent him some makeup he’d been using to cover up Greg’s name until the J faded into a thin silver line that only could be seen close-up. One day he asked Sherlock why he’d chosen the letter J.

“The girl who asked the question. Her name was Joanna. Everyone else spends all their time wishing she had their name on her hand. Hopeless, really.”

Sherlock had never been very good at talking to people and was always a bit socially inept, but he withdrew so completely from everyone (eventually even his brother) that many wondered whether he was even human.

 

Jenny had lasted a month, in middle school, and she even had ‘John’ written on her hand and he approached her this time. But eventually it was evident they weren’t meant for each other, and she tried to assure him that they were both common names and it was just an honest mistake, but she couldn’t understand why he was just shaking his head.

It was when the name changed three times in a week during high school that John finally decided to have Harry watch overnight (after yet another failure) so she could see it change. But Harry told him the next morning that she had only blinked and it was different.

John finally gave up on keeping track of the name and started reading about what it would take to be a doctor. He wanted to _understand_.

 

Sherlock, especially after his voluntary removal from society, displayed an overwhelming aptitude for science, but seemed to be very uninterested in becoming a lab researcher. When Mycroft asked him why he simply said:

“Too many rules and restrictions, obviously. But you’d know all about that.”

By this time Mycroft had rejected a role in the political spotlight and opted instead for more powerful behind the scenes work. He didn’t yet control the entire country, but he’d already shown a certain disregard for the rules (a Holmes trait) that endeared him to the higher-ups.

“Well. I wish you luck.”

                  Sherlock enrolled in university officially studying chemistry, but really studying whatever his mind became interested in. University was also the first time he actually had sex, with a nice girl named Rachel but her hand said ‘Ross’ so he didn’t try to find her again. He hadn’t particularly enjoyed himself, but that night in the dorm room was the first time he’d felt even remotely normal and he needed to see if the chemicals were purely physical or if it would feel different a second time.

                  Unfortunately, after seeing a blank hand no one really wanted a second time.

 

                  John enlisted after he got out of med school. He was broke and didn’t have many options, and he really did not want to go back home. Harry (as she was calling herself now) had found Clara (who was only mildly surprised that the name on her hand turned out to be female) and tried to introduce her to Mrs. Watson.

                  Mrs. Watson could only throw things and declare how upset her husband would have been if he was still alive.

John left soon after and didn’t look back. He wanted to live in London and try to find a doctor. He’d heard of a specialist who knew a lot about irregularities in the names and wanted to talk to him.

“Well, besides the changing you look pretty normal to me. I’ve gotta say, I haven’t seen this before, but I have seen people who come in here with names on both their hands, or three or four names. All of them found at least one of their soul mates, so maybe if you find the right one it will stop changing? I’d like to keep in contact with you, if you don't mind.” The doctor held out a clipboard with a long form for John to fill out.

And just like that he’d become a research subject, and if he mailed in monthly updates he’d get a small financial reward, which he used to support himself after he’d been injured in Afghanistan.

The war hadn’t been fun. John had watched a lot of people die. Two things stuck with him.

One was on a joint mission between a British regiment and an American squad of soldiers. When the officers were introducing themselves, their eyes suddenly widened when they caught a glimpse of each other’s hands. The British officer’s hand said ‘Tim’, which had caused him quite a lot of teasing but hadn’t really affected him beyond that. The American officer’s hand said “Jenny”, but when John got a closer look at it he realized that it had originally said ‘Jerry’, but the Rs had been cut to form Ns. Tim had looked around in panic at his squad, because although the rule that would have gotten him discharged had finally been repealed it still wasn’t _okay_.

John did see them exchange phone numbers, however, and promise to call each other when everything was over.

The second event was on a fighting day. The soldiers spent a lot of time sitting around doing nothing (meaning John was doing nothing), but on that day they were being shot at left and right and John was earning his measly pay. A soldier got shot down on his right and he heard a cry from one of the nurses. She crawled over (stupid, she could’ve gotten shot) and held the soldier’s hand in hers. Suddenly the name on her hand looked different somehow, like how a dusty book in a library yellows over and becomes more difficult to read. The name on her hand looked dead.

 

Sherlock met Lestrade after literally stumbling over his crime scene. Mycroft had never told anyone about that day at Greg’s house. And Greg had never shown anyone the weird name on his hand. Lestrade took Sherlock into custody for questioning.

“Look, I had nothing to do with his murder, but I can tell you that it was obviously his girlfriend.”

Lestrade finally looked up from his notepad for that.

“And how’d you figure that?”

Sherlock snorted. “Obvious, isn’t it? His wallet’s still in his pocket, but his hands are on a picture and on a necklace. The name on his hand matches the name scribbled on the back of the picture, and the gunshot came from a close enough range that he obviously knew his attacker. He also fell forward, instead of back, so I’m guessing he was kneeling, offering her the necklace and showing the picture. He’d been stalking her though, as the picture was weathered and had been taken out multiple times recently, but the necklace was brand new. Deduction: she obtained a gun for protection and shot him after he made it clear he wasn’t going to leave her alone. Can I leave now?”

Lestrade offered Sherlock a sum of money that the cocaine habit couldn’t refuse (there was only so much money he could spend before Mycroft got suspicious).

 

Mike Stamford introduced them as soon as John said he needed a flatmate. Sherlock had earlier said nearly the same thing, but Sherlock needed a flatmate more for experimentation and someone to talk to then financial support.

The name of the week on John’s hand was Laura, but he’d not even thought about that for three days now. The more names appeared, the less relevant they seemed.

John spent the entire (very weird, very awkward) meeting attempting to get a good look at Sherlock’s hand, but to no avail. He couldn’t spot anything.

He asked Mike about it afterward.

“The poor sod’s never had anyone there. I don’t think he ever will at this point.”

John decided that another freak of nature might make him more comfortable and showed up at Baker Street. And that was that.

 

For a while they solved crimes and played detective and were perfectly normal. John went out on dates and tried to find someone else who wasn’t preoccupied with the name on their hand (so many people would never meet their soul mate, and they could settle down, so why not him?). Sherlock sat at home and talked to the skull or John or Mrs. Hudson and never ever talked about the lack of writing on his hand.

Everyone thought that Sherlock was absolutely heartless and cared about nothing, but he’d snapped when John had finally asked him about his hand one day and John knew that he’d touched a nerve – old and covered up, maybe, but there.

Sherlock sends him texts signed _SH_ and John replies with bad grammar and poor spelling because he knows that it irks Sherlock, and sometimes that’s fun.

And then one day John was taken by Moriarty.

 

John’s felt fear before, even felt the fear of death. After all, he was in Afghanistan, and he did see and try to stop death may times. But he doesn’t think he’s ever felt the absolute terror he does when Moriarty’s lackey straps him into a bomb vest and sends him out to meet Sherlock.

Because if he dies Sherlock dies too and that didn’t matter so much a while ago but it matters now.

When did that happen?

Sherlock’s face when he sees John flickers between emotions John doesn’t think he’s ever seen on that face before. Fear, then anger, then betrayal, then more fear, and finally determination. His eyes say “ _I will get you out of here_ ” _._ John completely believes him. Sherlock offers up a trade: John’s life for his own. And John rolls his eyes because that’s the oldest trick in the book and what sort of villain would accept-

“Alright, boys. Let him go.”

And the next thing he knows John is outside the pool and is desperately searching for a phone.

“Lestrade!” He nearly yells into the speaker when he finally manages to stop a passerby. “Sherlock’s been a dumbarse again. Come quickly.”

When Lestrade and John and half the London police force burst into the pool they find Sherlock lying on the ground alone with a note saying:

_He’s all yours._

_-Jim_

John asks Sherlock why his hands are bleeding and for once Sherlock answers honestly.

“He said that if I were willing to die for you I at least deserved to have your name on my hand. He laughed when he saw I’d already done the J for him.”

John tries to make his voice sound soft and calm while he’s everything but. “Why did you already have a J?” He’d seen it, of course, but like quite a few things decided Sherlock would never tell him about it.

And Sherlock finally tells him everything, about Joanna and cutting himself and wanting to feel like a normal person but then deciding that normalcy wasn’t worth it.

“Until I met you, actually, I thought that ‘normal’ meant the same thing as ‘boring’. I see I was wrong.” And that’s the best compliment John will ever get out of Sherlock.

John looks at his hand. It says ‘Sophia’.

And he thinks about his sister and how their mother threw her out for what name she had on her hand. He thinks about Sarah, and Joanna, and Mary and the rest of them and how they never really meant anything close to what this man means. He thinks about the American and British officers and the soldier and the nurse and about Mycroft and his utter lack of caring for whatever name he had and he thinks about Jim Moriarty and how Sherlock could have been _dead_ , and he says to himself, under his breath, and yet to everyone he’d ever met:

“You know what? _Fuck it_.”

And kissed Sherlock, full on the mouth and in the middle of everyone and once they’ve both finally recovered and have stopped flushing red, whispers in Sherlock’s ear a promise to do it again once they’re both home.

Sherlock, for once at a loss of words, nods his agreement.

 

Mycroft shows up a few minutes later, all pompous and ridiculous and yet showing how utterly much he cares for his brother. But then he catches the eye of Greg Lestrade across the room and they’re both staring. They’ve changed utterly over the years, obviously, but it would take being blinded for Mycroft to not recognize those eyes.

He crosses the room and nods to Lestrade, who gruffly nods back, and then holds out his hand.

“Let’s start over. I’m Greg.”

Mycroft gives what must be his version of a smile, and for the first time in years, rolls his sleeve up, just slightly.

“I’m Mycroft.”

Their names mirror each other.

 

Mycroft insists that both John and Sherlock go to a hospital, at least to be checked over, but Sherlock quickly convinces the doctors that they would be much better recovering at home (and no one really wants him to stay, anyway, and he’s made it clear he’s not leaving without John). They’re out a few hours later.

They rush home to Baker Street, and after quickly checking in with Mrs. Hudson, turn and look at each other in their flat. And then they look down at their hands.

John’s still says Sophia, and Sherlock’s still has cuts. Nothing’s changed, but somehow everything’s changed.

Sherlock crosses the short distance between them and captures John’s lips.

Somehow they end up naked in John’s bed. John can’t remember exactly how, but he knows he enjoyed it.

And the next time John looks at his hand (hours later, mind you) it says:

_SH_

John gently picks up Sherlock’s hand, and reads the jagged, cut edges, so unlike the smooth imprint of John’s own letters. They look like they hurt, but they read like they were always meant to be there:

_JW_

He smiles and squeezes Sherlock tight.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on [tumblr](http://conversationslikeminefields.tumblr.com/).


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